American Sniper (2014): Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle's pinpoint accuracy saves countless lives on the battlefield and turns him into a legend. Back home to his wife and kids after four tours of duty, however, Chris finds that it is the war he can't leave behind.

Ok, guys. I'm about to take an unpopular opinion here. American Sniper is not good. I'm really worried that it's gonna win Best Picture because of its massive (and very undeserved) commercial success. If American Sniper does win Best Picture, this would be the perfect case study as to how successful a marketing campaign can be for a movie. Warner Brothers has spent a crapload of money on marketing this, both to consumers and the Academy, which is why this movie just beat out Avatar for best January release and got 6 Academy Award nominations. Cause, I got news for you, American Sniper deserves a nomination for, well, nothing. There were better acting performances this year and from a technical standpoint this movie is average. But America, f*ck ya am I right? If this movie doesn't sweep the Oscars then THE TERRORISTS WIN. If you don't see this movie then THE TERRORISTS WIN. I know there are some people that will come to the defense of this movie, even though they shouldn't, but here's its main problem: it's propaganda. It's the very definition of that. And it drove me somewhat insane. The movie has an good story with Bradley Cooper. He's great as Chris Kyle, yes. But the movie honestly doesn't offer a whole lot else. The movie is incredibly INCREDIBLY simplistic in nature, baby-feeding us its morals one issue at a time. There should've been a lot more moral dilemmas. There should've been a lot more issues at home with the family. And there should've been A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT MORE investigating into Kyle's time after the war and his issues with PTSD. But no. The movie is 132 minutes long, and we sure as hell can't have this movie any longer cause, you know, American attention spans suck so we can't have any of this stuff. Just unjustifiably small portions of each/

As for the acting, there are really only two performances in the movie worth noting. Actually, this is another problem I have with this movie. There is a large supporting cast, but nobody else even remotely stood out other than Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. Who were both great. If I had seen this movie before the Oscar nominations list was unveiled, I would've said that maybe Cooper gets a nomination for Best Actor, but upon seeing Selma David Oyelowo absolutely deserved the nomination over Cooper. That said, he is still excellent here. And I love Bradley Cooper in everything he does, so there's that too. I'm happy he's received another nomination, but he by no means actually deserves the award.

Gosh. These modern military movies are like....they're like Call of Duty. A lot of people buy the games, but they offer very little in terms of advancement within the genre they are in. And yet everyone always thinks Call of Duty is the best shooting game every year. Cause it's the only game within the genre they've played. That's the thing I'm really worried about, here: people are going to only see this movie from the Best Picture list and automatically assumes it deserves the award. It does not. Not even remotely. And honestly, as I've let this movie sit with me longer and longer, I'm becoming more and more pissed off at it. This movie had a real opportunity to question the ethics of war and the morality that comes with having a man's life in your trigger finger and raise the question of how far is too far to save your fellow soldiers that, in my opinion, it dropped the ball on in a pretty spectacular manner. To me that question of morality is only effectively brought up once-when a kid picks up an RPG and considers firing it on an American convoy-but other than that it really sums up the war in a clear-cut us vs. them fashion. And even here it was obvious what the kid was thinking about in killing Americans, he just decided not to do it. There was never a moment in the film where Kyle has to decide if a kid holding a grenade running at a marine is trying to blow them up or simply, you know, hand them a grenade they found somewhere. This black-and-white approach culminated with a terrible third act and a fight in a sandstorm which, while tense, turned the movie into essentially a mindless popcorn flick. As a result, this movie felt like propaganda to me and nothing more. Yes, it is a movie, but it is marketing itself as a movie with a heavy dose of morality attached to it. It is not this to an almost criminal extent. The movie has barely resonated with me at all, as it has been thrown into the rest of these modern military "propaganda" pieces that make way more money than they should. And yet....it's about America. How can I hate it right? How can anyone hate it? 'MURICA.

The Critique: I'm going to defer to a Family Guy joke for this one. 9/11 WAS BAD. (Cheers)

The Recommendation: IF YOU DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE, THE TERRORISTS WIN. (Sarcasm-watch Selma instead PLEASE)

Agree with basically everything stated above. The big thing for me was that, while I don't like most war movies to begin with, this one didn't appear to have anything stand-out-ish to make it amazing. It wasn't on the epic scale of Apocalypse Now, have the story of Saving Private Ryan, or the intensity of Zero Dark Thirty, and definitely didn't have the same moral or final impact that The Hurt Locker had. Everything besides Bradley Cooper just seemed so...meh, without substance. Just my thoughts though.

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Joseph Kathmann

1/26/2015 01:32:33 pm

Thanks for the thoughts man! Glad I'm not alone in my feelings!

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alex

1/27/2015 04:16:15 am

I would have to disagree. And I think now I can explain why I disagree with a lot of your reviews. You haven't taken this movie at face value, you have not gone into the theater in an unassuming manner and let a film move or not move you. You've watched a viral marketing campaign, and then assumed (incorrectly I might add) that they were adding a "heavy dose of morality", they weren't, you are wrong. Source - I worked with the people who made the viral marketing campaign.

This has nothing to do with "murica", this is an under lying issue I've seen in a lot of your reviews. You went in with WRONG assumptions and when the movie didn't fufill your WRONG assumptions it was bad. How? It wasn't ever trying to be what you wanted it to be. Now I'm telling you this because I genuinely think this is an issue you could fix. If you started reviewing movies for what they were instead of what you wanted I think you'd be onto something. As it stands your just another college guy writing ill informed personal opinions. Maybe that is what you want, but I thought you were trying to establish yourself as someone capable of forming a critical opinion on the basis of an experience. It is your job as a reviewer to have no assumptions. What trailers, get pumped, but when you sit down in that seat, let it all go. I thought this movie was ok, not great, not bad. Worth seeing, probably not worth winning an award. But this movie was leagues better than you give it crest for. I'd love to see you change your approach to reviewing, cause the writing is there, the passion is there, but the methodology is not.

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Enter the Movies (Joseph)

1/27/2015 03:11:04 pm

Alex,
First off, thank you for reading my reviews and seeing something in me and my reviews. That really does mean a lot to me, and I appreciate you saying it and the feedback you just provided.

You bring up a valid point in trying to watch a movie with no expectations at all. And I must say I love nothing more than sitting down to watch a movie knowing absolutely nothing about it having not seen a single ad or trailer for it before watching it. Some of my best first-watches have come out of this approach. (Whiplash is my most recent example of this, and that is FAR and away my favorite movie of 2014) That said, it is so difficult to do this in today's time, particularly when you go to a movie theater weekly like I do and see 20 minutes of previews before every movie. In today's day and age of huge marketing campaigns, it is impossible for me, or basically any other real critic to go into a movie without at least some expectations with these big budget films. I felt like I saw a preview for American Sniper every commercial break of every football game I watched in December, and I noticed the same things in the three promos that they switched between: they all focused on three scenes that dealt with big morality choices. Now, as it turns out the best scenes of the movie were all in the marketing campaign, which is also not good but I understand because you didn't exactly have a whole lot else to work with in terms of gripping scenes, but as a result of showing these three scenes involving ethical decisions, you led many to believe that the movie will focus heavily on the decisions these snipers have to make in the field regarding human life. And because these three scenes ended up being essentially the only three scenes involving these decisions, those people will inevitably be very disappointed.

That said, should I have been a bit more unbiased in this review? Yes. Do I think my score is too harsh? No. This movie does bite off waaaay more than it can chew and at the end of the day is still a below average film with numerous other faults (including a ridiculously fake baby that I intentionally failed to mention but seriously...that baby was horrendously fake and unacceptable in a big budget film from someone as iconic as Clint Eastwood) and I do stand by every word I said in this review.

Thank you, though, for your feedback. I will absolutely try to treat a film in a more unbiased manner from here on out. Also, can I just that's awesome that you worked with the people who made the marketing campaign? What was that like?

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